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Description

Take a romp through history, led by Dr Mike Smith, archaeologist and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the National Museum of Australia.

Free, bookings essentialFriends Lounge

Tuesday 24th April 2018, 11am – 12.30pm

This month’s book is: Osman’s Dream: The story of the Ottoman empire 1300–1923, Caroline Finkel, 2005, John Murray

A sweeping history of the Ottoman empire that for six centuries held sway over territories stretching, at their greatest, from Hungary to the Persian Gulf, and from North Africa to the Caucasus.

Tuesday 29th May 2018, 11am – 12.30pm

This month’s book is: The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A Selection, Samuel Pepys and Robert Latham (ed.), 2003, Penguin.

This is a vivid voice from the past. The 1660s were a turning point in English history, and Pepys provides an eyewitness account. But he also gives us a peep into private life of a man that lived nearly 400 years ago, from his socializing and amorous entanglements, to his theatre-going and his work at the Navy Board. Unequalled for its frankness, high spirits and sharp observations, the diary is both a literary masterpiece and a marvellous portrait of seventeenth-century life in London.

Tuesday 26th June 2018, 11am – 12.30pm

This month’s book is: Ochre and Rust: Artefacts and encounters on Australian frontiers, Philip Jones, 2013, Wakefield Press

This is a different sort of history as it uses objects collected by Museums as a window on cross-cultural exchanges along the colonial frontier in remote Australia. Ochre and Rust takes nine Aboriginal and colonial artefacts from their museum shelves, and positions them at the centre of some gripping, poignant tales. Ochre refers to their Indigenous context, while Rust is the patina of new values given to these objects by collectors.